I teach Drama at Sweet Water High School and Sweet Water Junior College. We have a really great departments due to the grants made to our school by one of our now famous alumni. He is an anonymous donor, but his gifts have allowed us to development a Hollywood production level program. We have a huge budget for props and wardrobe. We have quite a collection of wigs, current and period styles. Our special effects materials allow us to stage almost any kind of production from "The Elephant Man" to "Star Wars". We can perform physical special effects or support them with virtual (ie computer based) special effects on both film or the stage.

    We have staged some of the greatest stories of the past and given some young gifted writers and producers the opportunity to really develop their talents with the latest equipment and technology.

    I also coach the high school cross-country (that's X-country) team, well actual just the woman's X-country team. We have OK football and baseball teams, but not enough boys run to have a boys X-Country team, however with girls X-country being the only girls sports in the fall, we have been able to field a team for the last few years.

    As the girls moved from being Freshmen, to Sophomores, to Juniors, it became obvious to me that we were going to have a great Senior team. The five young women, who started with me four years before, had become a real rallying point for girls at the school. This year looked like the year they might go all the way.

    The year started out as most years do. We started with some simple productions in the drama department. Each student moving up in complexity from the things they did during the previous year and taking on more and more responsibility in the production.

    The X-country season started out great, we easily won our first 6 meets, some of which were big invitationals. The only thing that really concerned me was our small team.

    Let me take a moment to explain the sport of X-country for a bit. X-country is a team sport, even though each runner runs their race themselves without any help from their teammates.  The team scores points by the finishing place of each runner, ie 1^st Place is worth one point, 2^nd two points and so on, 25th Place would be worth 25 points.  Unlike most other sports the idea in X-country is to score the lowest score.  Each of your top five runner are added together to give the team score.  A team can run more than 5 runner (up to 7), however it must have at least 5 runners finish in order to compete as a team. If less than 5 runners finish, the team is disqualified and would therefore be marked down as a loss.

    The thing that had been bothering me the whole season, was we were fielding just the minimum 5 woman, if at any time any one of our runners was unable to make a meet or unable to finish for any reason, that could be the end of our chances to go all the way this year.

    It was at this point that something happened that was going to change my life forever. Hega a young foreign exchange student from Sweden, who was running as our number five runner had to return home. Her mother had become ill with cancer, and it appeared she might only have a few weeks left to live.

    She stopped by my office one morning and told me she was catching a plane home in a few hours. She had found out only a few hours before and it was obvious the stress had been really tough on her.

    She apologized for having to leave and leaving the team without it fifth runner.  I told her that we all understood and we hoped her mother would pull through and would survive her cancer.  I told her, her mother really needed her at this time and our needs were really not important against the needs of her parents right then.

    Within twenty minutes she was on her way and with her went our chances of going anywhere this year in X-country. I knew the other girls were going to be devastated.  They had worked so hard for the last four years and now just as their dream was about to become reality, it was being destroyed.

    The next few days were really tough for everyone, and the other girls on the team tried to get another girl to join the team, but it was well into the season and even if we could find someone, I doubted we could get a new girl in shape in time

    Hega was not our star runner, she was not even really as fast as the average runner. She had a big heart and always ran her best.  The thing she had to do every meet was finish, she could let the other girls do the rest.  She always did this and always came through.  To the rest of the girls she was as much a part of the team as our top runners.  She was really a team player. 

    It was at this time I started really thinking about other options.  I was not going to let this dream disappear, it just meant too much to the women.

Next Month: X-Country Act 1

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